With the gas prices today, everyone is keeping a closer eye on their fuel economy. I used to carry a little printed spreadsheet in my glove box and meticulously track every fill up to keep tabs on my MPG. Now with the advent of the Treo 650 smartphone I’ve found the replacement for the little piece of paper in the the glove.Highway Manager (US$15) is a great little application from the developer of Tiny Stocks (another of my Treo faves) that allows you to easily track your fuel economy on a Palm or Windows Mobile powered device. At each fill up you enter the odometer reading (in miles or kilometers), the amount of fuel (in gallons or liters) how much you paid, and the rest is done for you.
Highway Manager not only shows you the bad news (!) it also presents it in a number of different ways. The charts and graphs are compelling but I mostly keep it on the MPG screen. Highway Manager will even give you statistics a vehicle basis (it tracks up to 10) or on a date range basis (“how much did I spend last quarter?”).
Every entry can be assigned to a different category (e.g.: business, personal, etc) allowing you to easily categorize all the expenses relating to your car or motorcycle. Highway Manager also supports the concept of a trip allowing you to track of statistics based on an event. Each entry can be annotated with notes which are handy come tax time.
Sure beats that little piece of paper.

The Philadelphia PowerBook Users Group (PPUG) will have our summer 2006 meeting on Saturday, 24 June 2006. The meeting will take place from noon to 3pm at the Manayunk Brewing Company. We usually have lunch (or a brew) while we talk mobile computing. I will be giving a presentation along with Bob Snow and Rob Parker. Topics will include the new MacBooks, Apple Stores, as well as all manner of gadgets and a question-and-answer period. Feel free to bring items to sell or swap as well.
Join us for a great meeting, and it’s free and open to all and your guests.Be advised that the Manayunk Arts Festival is going on at the same time, so parking and traffic patterns will be affected. Please plan accordingly. The Festival begins at 11am and runs through the early evening. This would be a great day to bring your family into Manayunk and then meet after the meeting.
Manayunk Brewing Company
4120 Main Street
Philadelphia, PA 19127
215.482.8220

Something weird has been happening with the battery in my MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz for the past two or three weeks. Several times after carrying my MBP in a bag to or from work it would arrive completely shut down – which is weird because I never shut my machine down, I just put it to sleep. Then that problem morphed into something a little more serious.
Read the rest of the story on my ZDNet Blog: The Apple Core.